Raising Steam

(Discworld #40)

by Terry Pratchett

380 pages

English language

Published Dec. 8, 2013 by Doubleday UK.

ISBN:: 9780857522276

(21 reviews)

To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it's soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.

Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work - as master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital... but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and don't always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse...

Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi' t'flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. …

Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi' t'flat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if he's going to stop it all going off the rails...

1 edition

jellybeyreads reviewed Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Review of 'Raising Steam' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

2.5 stars, and because it's Terry Pratchett I just can't bring myself to round down as I usually do.

The railroads are a perfect topic for Discworld, and it's quite nice, actually, that the series ends with such a significant symbol of modernization; it's something like a promise that the turtle will keep swimming and Discworld will keep turning and its inhabitants will continue their inevitable push toward modernity, even if we no longer have the good fortune to read about it.

But LeBron help me, I got bored with this and it was a slog to finish. The last 20 pages or so were more enjoyable, perhaps just because it was a relief for the plot, such as it was, to have its loose ends tied up and for the whole thing to be, blessedly, over. The much-beloved core characters were "off", and it was really the secondary characters that were more entertaining this time around -- Harry King and Dick Simnel in particular -- maybe because there aren't as many expectations around those characters and you don't have to worry about whether Terry "got them right".

It's a bit disappointing that this is the last we're left with of Discworld. That said, we were granted dozens of brilliant books about a magical world and the funny old people who inhabit it -- Raising Steam doesn't undo that.

loppear reviewed Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Review of 'Raising Steam' on Goodreads

3 stars

Playful positive Pratchett, the good side of technological industrial progress well parodied and personified.

Didactylos reviewed Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Review of 'Raising Steam' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A bittersweet read. Has a little of the tone of rounding things off and tidying up some characters. A long book packed with 'stuff' Lots of allusions as you would expect.